mobile home dwellers anyone? advice please!

[notheroldie]

We live in a mobile home, and will have to until we build (ie anther year and half). This is our second winter coming up and we have a huge problem with damp...
We have dehumidifiers and good ventilation, but mould is growing on cupboards, skirting, etc and its driving me mad.
We have 3 dc and they always get coughs and colds and I think the damp and mould doesn't help.
Any advice please?????

Can you afford to keep it well heated?

We have central heating which we have just got going. We also have portable electric heaters in the lounge and a bedroom that we keep on very low because the temperature rises and falls very sharply. We have had the under neath of the mob.home boxed in to hopefully lessen the rise and fall of the temp due to the heat loss through the floor.

We are in one too - we had ucky mould (looked like pasta) growing under one of the walls from the loo - turns out the loo sink had a leak.

Can you give all the plumbing a once over (take the covers of the sink pedestals etc) see if there are any low level leaks. Check the roof/guttering

Is it in the shade - can it be moved to a more "exposed" area. I know they get horribly hot in the sun, but maybe more open in the winter would help stop things getting so bad.

Are you drying your washing in there? PigletJohn will tell you not to! Do you have an alternative? I dry ours in a (slightly musty smelling) workshop. We all smell slightly musty but at least is not dampening the atmosphere in our static.

You have probably done all this. My sympathies are with you. Ours is mostly OK (moved in in April - hopefully out soon) but our room (northern point of the static) smells musty, dusty and I cannot wait to get out. Even touching the carpet makes me cringe.

But it is and will be worth is.

And waayyyy cheaper than renting.

We don't dry things indoors luckily, and we had the roof replaced completely (bad weather wrecked it and the insurers paid, yay!).

I just wonder how to not let things get damp inside. We have a wooden cupboard which had mould like bread mould on it, not just mildew, and the dampest room (bathroom ) is the driest of the lot!
I think the prob may be it not being sited/ sealed properly when it was put here.

I do feel for folk who have to live in mobiles permanently, and I know we (only) have another year and half to go but it can be tough going.
Thanks for the info I will go in search of PigletJohn....

The damp is probably nothing more than moisture from breathing, this is a ventilation problem and not a heat problem. Do you use any gas appliances in the mobile as these create a lot of moisture.

Do you have mains electric dehumidifyers?

I was thinking about this today and basically you need to keep the place heated and simultaneoushly ventilated - very expensive but worth it for the sake of your health I should think.

I have never had a moby, but I would have expected the space between the inner and outer skins to be packed with insulation, which I would expect to be two inches thick or more, in which case the inner skin should not get cold.

So if you are getting excessive condensation you must have either some cold surfaces, perhaps because rainwater or other leaks have got into the space, or the insulation is for some reason missing, or you have excessive moisture in the air.

You say you do not leave wet washing in the home.

Do you get water streaming down the windows?

How is the home heated, and how is it ventilated?

Does it have a hot shower and, if so, where does the steam and warm moist air go?

Do you have any plumbing or rainwater leaks?

do you cook or heat with bottled gas?

how big are your dehumidifiers, and how much water do they catch per day?

Righto, I'll try to answer some of these Q's.....

Bottled gas central heating.

electric dehumidifiers, emptied daily, usually with a litre? or so water.

3 people in one bedroom, which does create a lot of hot air admittedly!

We always shower with a window open and its always left a bit open.

We did have a roof leak, but the whole roof was replaced.
We also noticed the temperature rose and fell dramatically so we had the underneath boxed in so at least the heat doesnt escape so badly through the floor. We have a plug in electric heater that we leave on minimum, continually from now til summer(haha)! which has a thermostat.

we are very exposed and south facing so in summer its too hot to be in and winter we get all the weather thrown at us. Not a lot we can do about that.

I do think we MUST have a leak through a joint where the two part were joined together, because that seems to be where the worst of the damp is, and it is the least exposed side of the mob.

Because some folk live in these permanently I figured it can't be such a bad thing I just wondered where I was going wrong.

It doesn't help having had solid rain for 10 days so the air is wet and outside is like a bog. Oh well!

Thanks everyone for the responses tho! I'll ventilate and dehumidify!

Oh and 6 of us live in here so yes there is a lot of breathing!

How do the fumes from the gas heater get out?

Gas central heating has a pipe outside like from all gas boilers.

no more ideas except:

When you use a dehumidifier in a room with the doors and windows shut, it will dehumidify that room. When the doors or windows are open, it will try to dehumidify the world.

Generally, ventilation is better and cheaper. But try leaving the dehumidifier running in one room with its doors and windows shut while you are out, see what it collects. If you find a room where it keeps collecting water even when there is no-one breathing or running taps in the room, then you know that room has another source of damp. If all is well, then it will collect water from e.g. a bathroom for a while until it is dry, then there will be no more except as moist air enters by ventilation.

thanks Piglet thats what I have done